User:Keithturkjr/sandbox

.224 Valkyrie .224 Valkyrie is a center fire rifle caliber that is designed to afford better longer range ballistics to AR-15 pattern rifles as well as other types of rifles that use a .22 caliber bore.

History In 2017 Federal Ammunition began the development of the .224 Valkyrie caliber rapidly followed by its introduction to the public in 2018. In the AR-15 user community there has always been a desire there has always been a desire to make a bigger better bang with an AR-15. In the 1980's the US Army transitioned its M-16's from 1" in 12" twist with 50 grain bullets to the 1" in 7"inch twist currently used in their M-4. In the early 2000's The US Army started using 77 grain grain bullets with good results. Upon seeing the positive results of the 77 grain bullets in the 1" in 7" twist rifles Sierra Bullets started making even heavier bullets that did not yield better results. The bullets Sierra made in 80 and 90 grain weights were good bullets but the 90 grain bullets were so long that they just couldn't be made to fit effectively in 5.56 x 45 mm brass. The 80 grain bullets fit, but they were so similar to the 77 grain bullets that they didn't catch on. Loading 90 grain SMK into 5.56 x 45 mm brass produces a dilemma where the loader has to chose whether they want to seat the long bullet deeply enough into the 5.56 mm brass to obtain a combined overall cartridge length that will fit into AR-15 magazine or add enough powder to make the bullet leave the barrel at some sort of acceptable velocity because the case volume just isn't there, then after making that less than ideal choice a new problem appears. The neck length of original 5.56 mm brass was designed to stabilize a much shorter bullet as it leave the cartridge and intially enters the lands of the barrel so the upper and lower tolerances for loading the 90 grain bullets and attaining consistently good accuracy is very tight. So this is the part of .224 Valkyrie bullet history where part of the shooters of the 5.56 x 45 mm cartridge wanted a different brass to fire .224 bullets from. There are numerous other calibers of cartridges that can be fired from an AR-15 that grew from shooters wanting different projectile characteristics from their AR-15, but .224 Valkyrie is the most significant example of a .224 caliber bullet offered in a chamber other than .223 win./5.56 x 45 mm that offers radically different projectile characteristics from standard 5.56 x 45 mm chambered ammunitions.

Charactaristics The .224 Valkyrie cartridge is efficiently designed to be a very small accurate cartridge that can be used in target shooting at extended ranges. The heavier 90 grain bullet loads are capable of remaining supersonic, and therefore retain predictable accuracy out to 1300 yards with factory loads. It does this with modest recoil very similar to the recoil of 5.56 x 45 mm. As far as terminal ballistics goes it starts out its flight with energy similar to 5.56 x 45 mm, but then retains its energy further downrange than the 5.56 x 45 mm allowing the bullet to offer a superior flight path and energy further downrange. .224 Valkyrie has a lot of potential to extend the effective range of the AR-15 pattern rifles against medium and large game as a hunting round, but it must be noted that the energy and loosely associated terminal performance of the bullet will deteriorate before the bullet's accurate targeting ability falls apart over distance. Heavier loads of .224 Valkyrie are sublime examples of how incorporating heavy for caliber low drag bullets with high sectional densities and high ballistic coefficients can make a projectile fly flatter with less wind drift downrange than a bullet with the same mass to forward force ratios. There are quite a few cartridges that can be accurate at 1300 yards like .300 Winchester magnum and .338 Lapua magnum, but those cartridges are much larger and have significantly more felt recoil to the shooter,...although with those caveats they do also have a lot more energy at 1000 yards. There are a few different loads .224 Valkyrie that have different characteristics due to the nature of the cartridge. There is a 75 grain full metal jacket bullet version that allows people to buy ammunition and practice with more affordable ammunition, and those cartridges are good for what they are designed for, but the reduced weight of the bullet also reduces the outstanding extended range qualities that the 90 grain versions have.

The original parent case of .224 Valkyrie is the .30 Remington case that the 6.8 mm SPC also gains its lineage from. The case those 3 cartridges share is about all they have in common as they each have very different characteristics.

Usage .224 Valkyrie is a very young caliber and its usage is still being defined.